Johannesburg - The Gauteng Legislature's Finance Portfolio Committee has urged the provincial Treasury to monitor the expenditure on conditional grants allocated to departments for planned projects.
According to the Gauteng Provincial Government, the Chairperson of the Finance Portfolio Committee, Sakhiwe Khumalo, told a media briefing at the Legislature on Tuesday that the committee was greatly concerned about general spending patterns on conditional grants.
"An observation was made that several departments spend the grants on matters not related to the intended purposes of these grants while other departments underspend," he said.
"The committee has made a commitment to monitor and evaluate expenditures on conditional grants at the Gauteng government departments, including ascertaining whether the right people and projects are benefitting from these grants," explained Khumalo.
Khumalo cited a handful of departments that had under spent on conditional grants including those of Health, Education, Local Government and Housing and Roads and Transport.
He added that the committee would play an oversight role by monitoring quarterly basis expenditure trends at the Department of Health in a bid to ensure that the department fulfilled its mandate to provide better and quality health care to the public without fail.
"The committee, in its first quarter report, notes that the departments overall financial management performance is satisfactory and expenditure, exceeding the 25 percent of each department's total budget as a benchmark was incurred by three departments;" he said, adding that the Gauteng Legislature overspent by R141 million, Health by R71 billion and Education by R7.4 million.
Making recommendations, Member of the Portfolio Committee from Democratic Alliance (DA), Mike Moriarty reiterated the need for conditional grants to be used for intended purposes.
